PFO just released their 1985 DVOA rankings with commentary. Great read.

[TecmoSuperJoe]

Yes haha, it's 1985 so who cares. I know a lot folks here aren't into the OG fluff pieces, but every year Pro Football Outisders seems to turn back the clock and after doing their data crunching for the NFL log books for a particular season, they release the DVOA marks for that year. For Offense, Defense, QBs, RBs, WRs, etc. The backbone for this year was obviously the legacy of the 1985 Bears, and how dominant they were when compared to the rest of the NFL team in the history books from 1985 to 2019. Is it the best defense ever? Here is the full article:

https://www.footballoutsiders.com/dvoa-ratings/2020/1985-dvoa-ratings-and-commentary

I also like what Aaron Schatz has to say with his commentary on the season, and what they found out. The game was just so much different back then, it's easy to forget a lot of tidbits that happened or were actually a regular occurrence. For instance: 

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A few other 1985 notes:

• Holdouts played a big role in the early part of the 1985 season. The Jets lost 31-0 to the Raiders in Week 1, in part because left tackle Reggie McElroy, right tackle Marvin Powell, and first-round rookie Al Toon were all holding out. The Raiders had 10 sacks against New York's backup tackles. Dan Marino held out for the entire preseason and the Dolphins lost to the Oilers (eventually the worst team of the year by DVOA) by a 26-23 score in Week 1. After his second interception of the game, with the Oilers up 19-16 in the fourth quarter, Marino was actually benched for Don Strock. (You can find this entire game on YouTube.) The other big holdout was in Los Angeles, where Eric Dickerson missed the first two Rams games. His absence didn't stop the Rams from winning both games, over Denver and Philadelphia.
• In Week 10, Ron Jaworski and the Eagles beat the Falcons with a 99-yard touchdown pass to Mike Quick in overtime. It's the longest play in overtime history. (Video here.)
• In Week 11, Houston cornerback Patrick Allen was called offside twice in one half against Pittsburgh. You don't often see a cornerback called offside once, let alone twice.
• To quote from the Week 12 Chicago-Atlanta broadcast: '"Cry for Dave Archer, Atlanta's quarterback. In front of Archer today when the Falcons oppose the Bears will be two rookies [RT Bill Fralic and RG Jeff Kiewel], a 39-year-old center [Jeff Van Note], a five-year veteran whose main job has been as a long snapper [LT Eric Sanders], and a left guard, Joe Pellegrini, who two years ago was a defensive lineman."
• In Week 4, Washington was ahead of Chicago 10-0 in the second quarter when punter/kickoff man Jeff Hayes got hurt on a 99-yard Willie Gault kick return touchdown. On the next Washington drive, the Redskins put Joe Theismann out to punt on fourth-and-16. Theismann managed to move the ball a whole yard. That's right: punt from the Washington 13, out of bounds at the Washington 14. "The guys said kick it right, and I did," said Theismann after the game. "Dead right." Chicago scored on the next play to take a 14-10 lead. Jay Schroeder punted the rest of the game and managed to average 33 gross yards per punt. The Redskins lost 45-10.
• This wasn't even the worst punt of 1985. In the divisional round of the playoffs, Giants punter Sean Landeta completely whiffed on a punt from the 12-yard line. His foot just missed the ball completely. The Bears didn't even block it, they just picked it up and ran it in for a touchdown. Techincally it was a -7-yard punt with a 5-yard touchdown return.
• I haven't even started to get into some of the strangest stuff from the 1985 season. Jeremy Snyder, who transcribed most of this 1985 play-by-play for us, also put together a Year in Quotes for 1985 that any fan of NFL history will enjoy.
• We've now got everything from 1983 and 1984, so that's going to be a project for the next few months, and hopefully we'll be able to unveil those ratings by next offseason.

I'd really recommend not only reading the entire article, but the comments section as well. There is always interesting information to ear hustle regarding the times of yesteryear on the gridiron. Like this nice tidbit

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by coremill // Mar 09, 2020 - 5:12pm

The 49ers' third-place DVOA ranking continues their run of top-3 rankings. Starting in 1998 and going backward, they finished 3, 4, 2, 1, 3, 2, 2, 2, 7, 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, and they will almost certainly be #1 or #2 in 1984 and likely top 3 in 1983 (WAS will be 1st but SF was 2nd in SRS) as well. That is an absurd run of dominance. Not even the Brady/Belichick Patriots come anywhere close.

Excuse the humblebrag. Yeah it took place in the pre-salary cap era, but pretty good regardless through 3 head coaches and two QBs. Anyways, it's the offseason. I think everyone would benefit in giving the full article a read. I can't wait to see the rankings for 1984 when they are released next year. Especially with the QBs. Marino will obviously be king. Sadly, it seems the complete gamelogs only go back until 1981 from NFL's official site, and I think for that year even it's incomplete. So 1970 games are off the table, and copies of games in that decade are sparse. Still, pretty good to have the information even go back that far. 

[FinSting]

Cool of them to do this retro stuff. Bears didn't start out so great that year, the Buccaneers ran wild on them in game one to drop 28 pts. I was watching the infamous third game that year at a friend's house. My memory thinks it was a MNF game but the Google says it was a Thursday night game. I just remember it was a night game, hanging at a friend's house freaking out when McMahon came in and blew open the game with the pass to Gault and the comeback was on. 

What a year the Bears had. Starting with that Game 3, they were on fire. Not just winning, but knocking the head off opposing QB's. Every QB except Marino was running scared that season (yeah, that other infamous '85 Bears game heh). 

I was a fan of Walter Payton back then, and also Gary Fencik. If you tried to arm tackle Walter, he breaks it and gone. If Fencik touched you, it's a tackle. Two greats. 

[TecmoSuperJoe]

4 hours ago, FinSting said:

Cool of them to do this retro stuff. Bears didn't start out so great that year, the Buccaneers ran wild on them in game one to drop 28 pts. I was watching the infamous third game that year at a friend's house. My memory thinks it was a MNF game but the Google says it was a Thursday night game. I just remember it was a night game, hanging at a friend's house freaking out when McMahon came in and blew open the game with the pass to Gault and the comeback was on. 

What a year the Bears had. Starting with that Game 3, they were on fire. Not just winning, but knocking the head off opposing QB's. Every QB except Marino was running scared that season (yeah, that other infamous '85 Bears game heh). 

I was a fan of Walter Payton back then, and also Gary Fencik. If you tried to arm tackle Walter, he breaks it and gone. If Fencik touched you, it's a tackle. Two greats. 

I often wonder if Payton played today, would coaches allow him to run with the ball like he did. What I mean is that a lot of times he carried the ball with one hand like a loaf of bread, which could lead to fumbles. In this era that is something that would be put under a microscope and scrutinized like crazy. But Payton was so good, maybe coaches would just let him be him. He didn't fumble that much after his first 3 years. 

Edited June 4, 2020 by PapaShogun

[JAF-N72EX]

FO is great, but you should take their data before 1989 with a large grain of salt.

The reason I say this is because I remember when their data used to only go back to about 1991 or so, when it was relatively accurate, and then they started to wanna go back to earlier dates. The problem with this was that they couldn't find videos of each game to go through it or even find the game logs, so they started asking the public to submit games that they may have so that they could complete it.

Needless to say, this they didn't get all of the data and so they had to rely on raw data and bunch of guessing.

This is why I will not trust their data before 1989. 

[TecmoSuperJoe]

5 hours ago, JustAnotherFan said:

FO is great, but you should take their data before 1989 with a large grain of salt.

The reason I say this is because I remember when their data used to only go back to about 1991 or so, when it was relatively accurate, and then they started to wanna go back to earlier dates. The problem with this was that they couldn't find videos of each game to go through it or even find the game logs, so they started asking the public to submit games that they may have so that they could complete it.

Needless to say, this they didn't get all of the data and so they had to rely on raw data and bunch of guessing.

This is why I will not trust their data before 1989. 

I read somewhere Aaron mention that they have the game logs going back to 1981, and that is when the incomplete data arises.

EDIT: Found what he said as a response to a comment. 

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I doubt we could collect the play-by-play from any year during the 70s. The gamebooks the league has collected on its own media site only go back to 1981 and even those are incomplete, we had to fill in with VHS copies of games from the 80s. Obviously, there aren't really VHS copies of games from the 70s.

I would assume with how long it takes these to come out, that it takes a boatload of time to watch/get games where game data isn't available, or a large portion is missing. Would also assume there would be a disclaimer if their final results are mostly guesswork (they have DVOA estimates of teams before their gamebook cutoff date). I'm going to give Aaron and his boys the benefit of the doubt. 

Edited June 4, 2020 by PapaShogun

[CP3MVP]

Interesting read. They still have the 91 skins over the 85 bears?

[JAF-N72EX]

17 hours ago, PapaShogun said:

I read somewhere Aaron mention that they have the game logs going back to 1981, and that is when the incomplete data arises.

EDIT: Found what he said as a response to a comment. 

I would assume with how long it takes these to come out, that it takes a boatload of time to watch/get games where game data isn't available, or a large portion is missing. Would also assume there would be a disclaimer if their final results are mostly guesswork (they have DVOA estimates of teams before their gamebook cutoff date). I'm going to give Aaron and his boys the benefit of the doubt. 

I Hear ya. And that's true too. 

Here is some of what I was talking about.

https://www.footballoutsiders.com/dvoa-ratings/2017/1988-dvoa-ratings-and-commentary

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In addition, there are a lot of problems with the play-by-play of these games from 30 years ago. I have to give massive, ridiculous props to Jeremy Snyder for all the hard work he's done transcibing past seasons, and he's also done a ton of work trying to make the play-by-play make sense with the NFL's historical stat totals. At some point during this process, after the Super Bowl, I'll write an article about some of the clear stat errors we've discovered in the NFL's past, and why it is so difficult to make old play-by-play logs agree with currently listed career totals. If numbers here disagree with official NFL stats for 1988, that's a big reason why.

When breaking down the gamebooks from 1988, I did not just notice how much less detail there was in the play-by-play back then.

 

 

https://www.footballoutsiders.com/dvoa-ratings/2017/1986-dvoa-ratings-and-commentary

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There's still a lot to do to add 1986-1988 to the Premium DVOA database and player pages. We'll be working on that over the next couple months. Meanwhile, after the 2017 season ends we'll get started on 1984 and 1985. We have all of 1985 except for one quarter: the first quarter of the Week 6 Colts-Broncos game has an unreadable mimeograph in the official gamebooks in both the Broncos and NFL archives. If we can't find a record of it elsewhere or a videotape, we'll need to piece it back together based on game stats, but we'll do our best. As for 1984, there are two games where we do not have any gamebook or video: Week 13 Bengals-Falcons and Week 14 Bills-Colts. If you know anything about a tape of one of these games, please let us know.

 

Edited June 5, 2020 by JustAnotherFan